The combat mission in Iraq is over!
So insists the press.
So tonight, I am announcing that the American combat mission in Iraq has ended. Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country. Having drawn down 100,000 troops since taking office, a much smaller force will stay to train and assist the Iraqi forces during the transition period. The President was unambivalent on what would happen after that time: “all U.S. troops will leave by the end of next year.”
Those words were declared August 31, 2010.
By then-President Barack Obama.
We remember. It's the press that doesn't remember or pretends not to remember.
We've seen this nonsense all before. And we're not stupid like the crowd over at ANTIWAR.COM. We grasp that nothing is changing and this is the White House's effort to drum up some votes for Iraq's Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kahdimi in the upcoming elections (planned for this October).
From Daniel R. DePetris' column for NBC:
Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi's visit to the White House on Monday produced what the Biden administration is marketing as a major announcement about the U.S. troop presence in Iraq: There won't be any U.S. combat troops in Iraq by the end of the year. The U.S. presence in the country will now focus on training, advising and enabling Iraqi security forces to conduct operations independently against the Islamic State militant group.
The Biden administration has framed this shift as a "significant evolution" in the U.S. mission in Iraq, with support personnel and logisticians favored over Apache helicopters and special forces. There's only one problem with this line of thought: The latest announcement won't do much to change U.S. military operations in Iraq, let alone end them.
What the White House is trumpeting as a withdrawal is more like a reclassification, in which combat troops become trainers and advisers in behalf of the Iraqi army. The current U.S. force posture in Iraq, about 2,500 troops, will remain almost the same. The mission U.S. troops are tasked with today is the same mission they were tasked with a week ago, with little sign of letting up: a seemingly endless endeavor to build a perfect Iraqi military.
Idiots fell for the end of 'combat' back in 2010. Many of them are falling for it again.
